How “faithfully” or “literally” should interpreters convey signed English (or Contact Language) into spoken English when sign-to-voice interpreting? Does it make sense to use the “meaning model” or “sense theory” to receive the signed English message, drop all the mouthed, signed, and fingerspelled English words, phrases, and figures of speech, conceptualize it, and speak the “meaning” of it in English?

I tried doing consecutive interpreting lately on 1:1 consultative assignments with deaf consumers who are visiting doctors, social workers, etc. These consumers signed fluently in a mostly English word order. I tried to receive their signed English, conceptualize the message more deeply than I usually do in simultaneous transliteration, and remember some of their word choices. What I found was that the processing time helped me avoid miscues or “false starts,” but I forgot some of their wording.

Does it matter if the interpreter loses some of the deaf consumer’s word choices, turns of phrase, etc.? Or is it more important that the interpreter convey the consumer’s conceptual meaning regardless of language? I would like to hear from sign language interpreters and deaf & hearing consumers of interpreting services.

I based this discussion on sources I have read but cannot remember whom to cite anymore, as well as some I have read this morning to jog my memory and find something specific I could use as a citation:

Anukriti.net About Translation.

Vicars, B. (n.d.). American Sign Language: contact signing. On “American Sign Language University” at Lifeprint.com – A resource for ASL students and teachers. American Sign Language: Contact Signing.

Wikipedia – Language Contact. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_contact.

The other morning for the Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies, I read a quotation of Danica Seleskovitch’s “Théorie du Sens” or “Meaning Model” and I’m not sure it applies to sign language interpreters who interpret contact language between English speakers and bilingual English/ASL deaf signers. After all, it is not that most deaf people don’t know English; it is that they can’t hear it. The only time I do what Seleskovitch describes is when I’m interpreting for ASL monolinguals, and even in their ASL there is often some English. Is there any “pure” ASL that we can apply the Meaning Model to?

Relating how I became an interpreter in 18 months to the chapter “The 10,000 Hour Rule” from the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. What is your “10,000 Hour” story?

A video response to Mikey Krajnak’s video about ways that interpreters accept and deal with feedback. I relate my experience in the MA in Interpreting Studies program at WOU and what I’m learning about effective and nonjudgmental ways interpreters can give each other feedback, including Demand-Control Schema, Observation-Supervision, and Case Conferencing. I also ask Mikey what he thinks about whether “the customer is always right” and how to give good customer service as an interpreting professional.

My reflections after the first week of our two-week face-to-face session (or colloquium). I learned a lot, and I share what I learned about feedback as a follow-up to the video I posted about receiving unsolicited feedback last week. Topics include Demand-Control Schema, Talking about “The Work,” practitioner-centered approach, professional discussion, case conferencing, listening, observation/supervision, nonjudgmental inquiry, guided self-discovery, etc.

In this signed language video, I talk about my experience of sharing a sample of my interpreting and transliterating work and receiving unsolicited criticism on it. Haters tend to be people with no real names and no creative works of their own. All they do is shoot down others’ work and give nothing to YouTube. As an interpreter, I am courageous enough to share my work–imperfect though it may be–with the world so that people may see it, but I am not thick skinned enough to take criticism about it. I think there are things a person creates and is willing to share with the world but doesn’t want to allow responses on because they don’t want the criticism and they don’t need the praise. This is how I feel about the sample I posted yesterday.

As an assignment for the Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies at Western Oregon University (WOU MAIS), I completed a videotaping of myself spending about 20 minutes interpreting a source text I had not heard before. I found my source text, Simon Lewis: “Don’t take consciousness for granted,” at TED.com. There is an interactive transcript that you can view by following the link above.

I would like to think that this is not a sample of my best work, but I am humble enough to accept that there are times when I am working in real situations that this is the best I can do with such an unfamiliar topic and fast pace.

Here are some facts about me and the circumstances under which this sample was recorded:

• The hearing speaker appears to be a 50-something-year-old white male from a foreign English-speaking country (South America, Australia, England?).
• I am a 44-year-old white American male.
• I began learning ASL when I was 21.
• I have 21 years’ experience as an interpreter and transliterator.
• I earned my RID CI in 1998 and my CI in 1999.
• I earned my RID NIC Master in 2010.
• I earned a Bachelor’s degree in 2003.
• This is my first recorded video assignment for the Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies at Western Oregon University (the WOU MAIS).
• I recorded this in my own home using a tripod, camera that records HD video, laptop connected to TED.com, amplified computer speakers connected to the laptop, and both artificial and natural lighting. I set up all of the technology myself just before recording this sample.
• I had no audience for this recording; all that was in front of me was my camera and my home.
• My only preparation was reading the “About this Talk” and “About the Speaker” paragraphs before interpreting/transliterating the video.
• I planned before I recorded this to publish it on YouTube for a global audience, even though this was not a requirement of the course assignment.

I post this more for educational purposes than as a part of a résumé, but if a potential employer were to judge my work based on this sample, I would not discourage them from doing so. As I said, this may not be my best, but it is an acceptable sample of current work considering the circumstance listed above.

Do you have any questions about any part of this video or the making of it? If so, please leave a comment. I have disallowed further comments for reasons stated in the two comments I made on this blog entry.

I created these two videos yesterday and this morning at the start of the Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies program at Western Oregon University (WOU MAIS).

This was a song I worked on translating with my then mentor, Jean Kelly, in 1994, and I performed it as the finale to a one-man show I put on San Diego in 1995. I was only 28 then! If you can’t tell, I sang & signed this song simultaneously– a hard feat because what I was signing was not the same as what I was singing. I signed it as ASL as I could while singing English. Do you like it? Leave a comment to let me know what you think. Or, if you would sign it differently, post a video response.

By the way, looking back I can see that I took this song too slow, and my singing and signing were a bit over-the-top. Oh, well!

P.S. “Over the Rainbow” was composed by Harold Arlan with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg. It is from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, and it was sung by Judy Garland in the role of Dorothy. Judy Garland was known for "Over the Rainbow" her whole life. My piano accompanist on this song was James Bianchi.

Thanks to YouTuber xkorijaidenx for emailing me about her video response to YouTuber soph1951′s vlog “What Exactly Is ASL?” Soph’s vlog was inspiring and liberating for me, and moved me to create this video response. I will leave it up to people who know American Sign Language to understand this video without captions or preface. It speaks for itself.